Meat as benign, meat as risk: Mapping news discourse of an ambiguous issue

Abstract

This article analyzes the content of news coverage of the meat industry. As knowledge develops about the social problems connected to the meat industry, we are presented with an empirical question. When an everyday consumer item and major commodity with a rich cultural tradition is also linked to potential risks, how do we talk about it? We investigate how risks of the North American meat industry are discussed in newspaper and news blog articles by conducting an automated content analysis of 2461 articles published from May 2015 to August 2016 and qualitatively coding 100 of these articles. We identify which topics predominate in the discussion of meat and also find variation in the extent to which topics are oriented to discussion of social problem risks. Moreover, while newspapers and blogs are each diverse in the way they treat news about the meat industry, we find that social problem risks are relatively de-emphasized in newspapers relative to news blogs. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of our findings and methods for other “taken for granted” phenomena.